In the Dark

Today is the centenary of the formal handing over of Dublin Castle, on 16th January 1922, by British authorities to the Provisional Irish Government formed after the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It was a significant event, but was not what many people (including until recently myself) thought it was.

I went to the Cinema to see the Neil Jordan film Michael Collins when it came out. I enjoyed the film but only subsequently discovered how many glaring historical inaccuracies there are in it, right from the scenes at the beginning of the film, of the Easter Rising in 1916, that show Michael Collins alongside Eamonn De Valera at the surrender of the GPO. In fact the GPO was evacuated long before the surrender and De Valera was never there anyway: his battalion was in the East of the City at Boland’s Mill. I suppose the Director thought it was more dramatic the way it was depicted in the film, but I just find it irritating.

Now to the handover at Dublin Castle. This is how it is portrayed in the film, with Liam Neeson as Michael Collins:

Almost nothing in this entire scene is historically accurate. Collins arrived 90 minutes late owing to a transport strike, so the famous line about “you can have your seven minutes” is a concoction (as is the rest of the dialogue). Moreover, Collins arrived in civilian dress not in military uniform. The handover happened in a private meeting inside the buildings, not outside in a grand ceremony. There was no lowering the Union flag either.

I suppose the cinematic version is more dramatic than what happened in reality, which was much more mundane, but I think this kind of deliberate manipulation is more than a little sinister. If you want to know history then you shouldn’t try to learn it from a movie but instead do a bit of reading of properly researched literature. That’s one of the reasons why we have historians.